


the last day

by candybank



Category: UNINE, UNINE (Band), 偶像练习生 | Idol Producer (TV), 青春有你 | Qing Chun You Ni
Genre: :-), Other, ceo yixings their dad, golden boy wenhan and family disappointment mingming are brothers, mingming centric ish, single dad mingze.., tw death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 05:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18382298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybank/pseuds/candybank
Summary: when death comes knocking on people’s doors, he usually comes alone, but when he knocks on the carved mahogany and stained glass estate gates of the very rich, he comes with debts to be paid and positions to be filled and relatives like wild hyenas waiting for a bite of the fortune left behind by the death of an heir.





	the last day

**Author's Note:**

> so!!!1!!!!1111 yea pls lower ur expectations nothing happens in this fic

the news of zhang wenhan’s death hits like a blow to the tail-end of a Boeing single-aisle 737 caused by an explosion of a homemade bomb from inside the toilet—which is funny, because that’s exactly what authorities say caused the plane crash that killed him.

mingming thinks it’s funny that it happened on a Tuesday, not because there’s anything funny about losing his only brother—his humor really isn’t as dark as everyone says it is, but because Tuesday, mingming thinks, is the most normal of days. no one expects anything from a Tuesday. it’s not as bad as Monday, not as great as Friday—certainly not as special as Sunday or as lucky as Wednesday or as good at business and finance as Thursday or as handsome as Saturday. 

but Tuesday is a normal day. Tuesday is an accident with the second wife of a multi-national conglomerate’s ceo, which, along with his long history of smearing the family name and being a complete waste of space, is probably why his father hates him so much, but one-out-of-six successful visits to rehab later, and Tuesday is two years sober. Tuesday has spent the last three years of his life trying to glue the flimsy, water-logged paper pieces of himself back together, running the company’s foundations, building houses for the poor and writing financial reports. Tuesday finally finished his last year of college and Tuesday finally fixed his dead front tooth that he got from running into a building while blackout drunk in Amsterdam, and Tuesday, mingming thinks, has been working hard and he was doing just fine before his brother was killed and half the world started blaming him.

“did you?”

“… did i what?” 

yixing sighs and wipes his face with the palm of his hand, and mingming has seen that face before far too many times. when he failed chinese in fourth grade, whenever he got kicked out of a high school or a university or had to be signed into rehab. exasperation, disappointment. and mingming has only ever felt ashamed or sad or sorry, but now he feels afraid, and angry, because he doesn’t want to know what his father is asking him.

“what are you asking me, dad?”

yixing gets another look on his face, like he hates when mingming calls him _that_. and mingming, feeling as if he’s just been shot in the face, with his heart in his throat and tears welling behind his eyes, he gets up on his feet before he can really feel his legs.

“i didn’t plant the bomb. i didn’t kill wenhan,” he says, almost indignant, then suddenly, with his voice going soft and his gaze lowering, the hurt in his voice betraying the anger in his eyes, “if that’s what you’re asking _your_ _son_ , _dad_.”

 

***

 

“he asked me if i killed him,” mingming says, breath reeking of blueberry blitz and marshmallows. it’s Friday night, barely an hour later, with the walls swirling pink and white and green—it’s a yogurt shop, but mingming thinks it looks like a good acid trip.

"news said it was turbulence," mingze says, and he doesn't know why he's trying to lighten the mood when he never does these things successfully. jokes and one-liners.

mingming doesn't laugh.

“that fucking sucks, man, i’m sorry,” mingze sighs, sucking mango mania off of his spoon as a little boy runs by them screaming.

mingming flinches. “why’d you bring me here?” he asks. “this place looks like my vomit after one of guanyue’s parties.” he picks at the lump of blue in his paper cup, “tastes like it too.”

mingze laughs, and mingming notices him glance at the glimmering hunk of gold strapped around his wrist for the time again. “they have half off on toppings,” he says, already sounding faraway.

and mingming doesn’t say anything, because there is nothing much to say. mingze is here and he’s grateful for it, but he never says thank you anyway, and mingze never expects to hear it. so, he simmers in the loudness of too-bright lights and too-noisy children, and he eats his yogurt in silence. UGurt, reads the label on the cup, and mingming thinks about how ugly it sounds.

“you came,” mingze says, and when mingming looks up, his friend is already at the door. he’s talking to a woman. mingming has only ever seen her before on magazines and at a wedding, and she’s beautiful now but he has also seen her with her makeup cracked like a beer bottle against the wall. she’s saying nothing, and mingze is saying something, and mingming looks down to the pool of blue in his paper cup.

the door chimes closed, and mingze walks back moments later with a little girl’s tiny hand wrapped around one of his fingers.

“uncle mimi!” the girl calls, breaking away from mingze to run to mingming. and mingming, he catches her with open arms and a smile.

“yanyan,” mingming laughs, lifting her up onto his lap and giving her cheek a big smooch. “you’ve gotten so big!” 

the little girl giggles, grabbing mingming’s nose as she tends to. 

“let’s go get you a yogurt, huh? what flavor do you want? ” mingming says, and the little girl nods, and mingze laughs at the sight of it.

 

***

 

when death comes knocking on people’s doors, he usually comes alone, but when he knocks on the carved mahogany and stained glass estate gates of the very rich, he comes with debts to be paid and positions to be filled and relatives like wild hyenas waiting for a bite of the fortune left behind by the death of an heir.

mingming is thrust into wenhan’s position as Public Relations Manager of Zhang Industries, which is really just a modest way of saying that he now owns twenty percent of the company and he will own the rest of it when zhang yixing dies.

and zhenning, li zhenning, a leaf off of a branch of the family that was never supposed to be part of the tree, he’s the first to visit mingming in his shiny new office on the 60th floor.

mingming thinks that zhenning isn’t that much of a hyena; he’s more like a lion cub whose mane grew in too soon. he comes in, half a head smaller than mingming, black suit sharp and tailored to his skin and hair gelled and grin on his mouth.

“congratulations, cousin, ” he says, and mingming gets the feeling that zhenning might have meant to say that to himself, that he might have said one thing and meant another. “and condolences.” 

“thanks,” mingming smiles, warm and slight, sitting in the big leather chair behind the big desk and leaning back. everything in the office is big—almost theatrically so; wenhan had picked out the space and the décor when he was first inducted into the position, sometime between mingming dropping out of his second university and trying to skydive without a parachute. and they’d always had different tastes. there’s brown wallpaper where mingming would have painted the wall black, there are museum antiques on ming-dynasty coffee tables where mingming would have put an empty space.

he hasn’t gotten around to reorganizing the place, or to deciding whether or not that’s appropriate. he doesn’t know how to deal with the sudden death of a loved one, even if they never loved him much. for now, nothing much is his but the name on the door and the snoopy figurine on the table.

he feels a little like a placeholder, and zhenning looks at him like that’s exactly what he is.

“sorry i can’t stay with you. i have a meeting in about thirty minutes,” mingming says, glancing at his watch, feeling as if the very words that leave his throat aren’t his to say.

“oh, no problem. i just wanted to say good luck,” zhenning smiles, sounding as if he means to say something else, but then he leaves, almost abruptly, and mingming wonders if he ever meant to say anything else or if he had left his sentence incomplete deliberately.

he thinks that zhenning is the kind of person to do things deliberately. he thinks that’s one of the hundred-million things that zhenning and wenhan had in common. he thinks maybe that’s why his brother and his cousin were the very best of friends.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> stan unine!!!!1!11!!! STAN UNINE..anyw,i wna continue this i probably will..


End file.
